Del Vecho’s latest project is the highly-anticipated “Frozen,” which hits theaters today, and it’s already creating a swirl of Oscar buzz for best animated film.

Del Vecho, however, recalls being hooked on movies long before he started making them. At the long-gone Strand Theater, he remembers seeing “The Sound of Music” and “Bambi.” The latter would later shape Del Vecho’s approach to projects.

“That made a big impression on me when I was young, both for the comedy between Thumper and Bambi, but also for the fact that it had real emotion to it when the mother died,” he said by phone from California. “I think when I got older and started making films, I realized it’s important to have all ranges of emotions from comedy to drama. If you can make people laugh and make people cry in the same movie, then I think you’ve got something.”

Del Vecho is quite familiar with not only watching movies, but also taking part in many sides of show business.

“In Quincy when in was in junior high school and high school, I did some acting in theater. Then I went to Boston University and got a BFA in theatrical production. Later on, I moved to Minnesota, where I worked at the Guthrie Theater for nine years and met my wife. Then I moved out to California to work in animation. My first job on a movie was as production manager on ‘Hercules.’”

Del Vecho admitted that he gave up the idea of acting a long time ago.

“I realized that I was better at developing the stories and hiring people to play the roles,” he said. He also said he feels that the people he knew back in his Quincy days wouldn’t be too surprised to find that he ended up as a film producer.

“All my friends in high school knew that I was into both music and arts all along” – he still plays trumpet and piano – “so I think they assumed somehow that I would continue with that, and indeed I have.”

Del Vecho started his climb up the Disney animation ladder very soon after “Hercules,” which was released in 1997. He was associate producer on “Treasure Planet” (2002) and “Chicken Little” (2005), then reached the level of full producer on the Oscar-nominated “The Princess and the Frog” (2009) and “Winnie the Pooh” (2011).

It was while still working on “Winnie” that he got the gig on “Frozen,” a movie idea that had been kicking around for many years. Walt Disney, who died in 1966, actually had plans to bring it to the screen.

Page 2 of 2 - “I believe it was going to be a combination of live action and animation at the time,” said Del Vecho. “There are a few drawings that [Disney animator] Marc Davis did in the archives, but there’s not a lot of information on it. All I know is that both that early version and our movie were inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen novel.”

“Frozen” tells of two orphaned sisters, the older of which has special powers that inadvertently turn summer into harsh winter in the story’s Norway setting, while the younger one tries to save her sister from self-imposed isolation ... and maybe find true love along the way.

“We want people watching this to go through as many emotions as you can so that by the end of the movie, you feel like you’ve seen something really big,” said Del Vecho. “In ‘Frozen,’ we try to raise the stakes for our characters so that there’s actually something in jeopardy. Of course then we balance that with the comedy so that there are moments where you can relieve that tension, as well.”

And that approach seems to be working. On the popular movie review Web site Rotten Tomatoes, “Frozen” has an aggregate score of 92 percent and much praise has been given to the voice cast that includes Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff and Josh Gad.

“I was hired on as producer to understand what the vision was for the movie, and to bring a staff of artists together to make it happen,” Del Vecho said.

While “Frozen” is a full-blown computer-generated 3-D animation feature, Del Vecho’s “The Princess and the Frog” was a traditional hand-drawn film. But he knew this one would be CG from the get-go.

“It’s all about the story, and choosing the medium that’s right for that story,” he said. “In this case the environment played a large character in the movie, and we wanted our characters to interact with that environment – not just walk on a white surface, but really walk in the snow and have ice that reflects and refracts, and CG lends itself very well to that.” But even with that plan, Del Vecho, along with his directors and writers, always invited input from others.

“We screened the movie for ourselves about every 12 weeks over that two-and-a-half year production period, and at that point we’d bring in all of the other writers and directors at the studio, who weren’t working on the movie, to watch it with us,” he said. “Then we’d go away for a two-day retreat where we only talked about what was working and what was not working, and how to elevate the movie.”

So with the film set to open this week, is Del Vecho already working on another one? “No, I’m still involved in ‘Frozen,’ and will be through the DVD release next spring,” he said. “There are a lot of great projects in development at Disney, any one of which I’d be happy to produce, but I’m just going to enjoy this ride right now.”